Bilingualism in Canada: the legislation's reform

Abstract

The Official Language Act plays a key role in the lives of Canadians. Its purpose is to ensure respect for English and French as the official languages of Canada in governmental and parliamentary institutions, support the development and vitality of official language minority communities, set out powers, duties and functions of federal institutions with respect to the official languages of Canada. The Government of Canada has decided to modernize the Act to ensure that it continues to serve Canadians in a changing environment. That is why the Government of Canada showed its commitment to promote, protect and update a law by sharing its vision for official languages reform in February, titled French and English: Towards a substantive equality of official languages in Canada. After 30 years since the last major update, a modernization of the Official Languages Act is necessary to allow the law to keep pace with the social, demographic and technological realities in today’s society, which did not exist during the last revision in 1988. The bill recognizes the diversity of provincial and territorial language regimes and focuses on learning opportunities of the first language in minority settings and on learning opportunities of a second official language in a majority situation to improve the rate of bilingualism among Canadians. The bill also seeks to protect institutions of official language minority communities both for the English-speaking minority in Quebec and for the French-speaking minority in the rest of the country, and proposes new ways to better protect French in Canada, including in Québec.